November 22, 2015

On screen Bill Pullman is that guy, rarely first choice for the girl, but you spend a lot of watching wondering exactly why not: see Sleepless in Seattle, or While You Were Sleeping; he comes late, back from the war, in the movie A League of their Own, and Geena Davis leaves baseball for his shy winsome character. Perfect for the romantic comedy genre, Bill Pullman was also a brilliant fit for David Lynch in his Lost Highway, an observation made by Greil Marcus in his The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice, in which he could trace the American landscape across Bill Pullman’s face: “I always saw something in his eyes,” Marcus quotes Lynch, and it’s that quality that makes him a tender American icon on film.

Don’t expect Die Hard Bruce Willis in his Broadway debut in Misery at the Broadhurst Theater. As best-selling author Paul Sheldon in the play based on a beloved if frightening film based on a beloved if frightening Stephen King book, Willis drops the tough guy pose, making most of his moves in a vertical position. That’s because he’s been in a terrible car crash, and fortunately saved from the wreck by his # One Fan, Annie Wilkes, as feisty and superb as the seasoned actor Laurie Metcalf gets. Annie has made up a lovely bedroom for him in her house, and she’s got plans, wielding both a mallet and a rifle as needed. A good case could be made for gun control, at least background checks for crazies.

November 19, 2015

The Oscar buzz around Todd Haynes’ new movie Carol may focus on the two women Cate Blanchett’s Carol and Rooney Mara’s Therese, but Phyllis Nagy’s adapted screenplay, from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, will surely garner an Oscar nod too. The story of two women, an upper class suburban housewife and mother, and a shopgirl cum photographer, and their love affair, subversive for the early 1950’s, is timely, with a screenplay that is intelligent, and avoids clichés and sentimentality. Carol is married to Harge (an excellent Kyle Chandler), handsome and moneyed, but the marriage is cold. Yes, there is sex, but not lurid.

November 18, 2015

A master storyteller in the tradition of medieval balladeers, Sting recounted a childhood experience at a celebration this week of his The Last Ship from the River of the Northern City, a handcrafted boxed edition of his Last Ship lyrics with woodcuts by “luminist” painter Stephen Hannock, published by Two Ponds Press. Growing up in his Northern English city of Newcastle, near Scotland and water, Sting used to attend official ship christenings. Because dignitaries and royals would attend too, his mother would dress him in Sunday best, attire he hated. Once he saw the queen there, and in a moment fantasized that they had made eye contact, a personal connection. He saw the fancy automobile in which she arrived and imagined a different life from the one he was clearly destined for. And now of course he lives in Manhattan. He pointed to the spectacular panorama from the 44th floor of the Hearst Building, and, accompanying himself on guitar, sang: “Dead Man’s Boots,” “The Night the Pugilist Learned to Dance,” and “The Last Ship.”

November 15, 2015

The stage at the Lyceum Theater for this exceptional theater event, the current revival of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge looks like a set for a boxing match, with audience on three sides, not the more traditional sitting room of a Brooklyn apartment. Director Ivo van Hove’s vision goes for the iconic: a fight ring, a stand-in for a battle of emotion. Unlike a previous New York revival where an actual bridge looked to the joining of boroughs, in this production’s abstract conception, the bridge, a device for transitions may refer to coming to America, old school mores versus new, life and death. The bridge may be the play’s trans-Atlantic journey from London’s Young Vic production to these shores. Most powerfully, here invisible, the bridge is yours to imagine.

November 14, 2015

In celebration of their new cookbook, Fig & Olive: The Cuisine of the French Riviera, Francine and Laurent Halasz, mother and her devoted son, greeted dinner guests with glasses of Veuve Clicquot and warmth at the Fig & Olive restaurant in the Meatpacking this week. Laurent especially emphasized the work of his mother in creating the special recipes contained in the book, an Assouline publication, and for their restaurants. With smiles to all, Francine, gorgeous in red, worked the room, not saying much as she does not speak English, but you could see that the room was packed with grateful diners, already high on champagne, and spirited by the chestnut and butternut squash soup with Grenache Syrah pairing.

The sixth annual DOC NYC festival opened on Thursday with Miss Sharon Jones!, Barbara Kopple’s documentary about soul singer Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Early on we see Sharon Jones getting her short braids shorn, an accommodation to her stage two pancreatic cancer as she was being treated with chemo. A pint-sized dynamo, Sharon Jones is a tough person to keep down. The film follows her care in Sharon Springs, New York with her friend Megan, a healer, who blends green smoothies to ensure Jones stays on a healthy diet. Her doctors are on board too, and her band mates who depend on the gigs. Brothers, they form a bond through their music and lives, escorting Jones to her doctors, as well as backing her onstage. They know that Sharon Jones is an indomitable force with raging talent, and they’ve held together for decades. For performances alone, this is a film to see. At Lugo where an after screening party was a celebration of this film and the week of documentaries to come, Barbara Kopple spoke about how Miss Sharon Jones! fits into her exceptional body of work: “It’s about family.”

November 13, 2015

Aaron Mark’s play, Empanada Loca, a dramatic monologue that zips by in 95 minutes, starts in the dark. A voice, a light, and then Dolores! As Dolores, Daphne Rubin-Vega, her cheeks hollow as a skeleton, framed by her hoodie, recounts her life story, how she came to live here in the lowest recesses of a subway tunnel. The fine staging is minimalist at the Labyrinth Theater, just lights in a black box with a massage table at center. Infinitely resourceful, a skill she picked up in prison, Dolores has wired the space for lighting, she says with pride, so a visitor can actually see her, and get used to the dark, as she did, although the food’s not great down here several levels down, and loneliness is an issue.

November 11, 2015

At 21 Club this week, screenwriter/ director Oren Moverman spoke excitedly about his new vocation as activist. Co-writer of Love & Mercy, Moverman was largely responsible for crafting a script, not your standard issue biopic about Beach Boy Brian Wilson, but a complex view of this iconic musician at two distinct points of his life. Early on, Paul Dano plays Brian Wilson, and later John Cusack, when he is out of the public eye, and totally under the control of Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) for his growing psychosis. In a real life love story, Melinda, a car salesperson with soul (a wonderful Elizabeth Banks) rescues him.